Source
As promised, Warner Bros. has unleashed advance ticket sales for The Batman. That includes Wednesday evening preview screenings and the now-standard slew of Thursday showings starting as early as 3:00 pm. Considering too many theaters barely even open until the afternoon hours, we're almost at the point where Thursday should count as its own day. But I digress. Ironically, Warner Bros. tried to count the Thursday previews for Man of Steel ($21 million) as its own separate day, arguably because they knew word of mouth would be divisive and they wanted to make the second weekend look drop smaller.
Anyway, the first official pre-release tracking has popped on the board, with indications that The Batman could open with around $80 million. Only $80 million, you say? Well, tracking isn't an exact science, Warner Bros. has three weeks left to go and we should recall that Batman Begins opened with $72 million over its Wed-Sun debut back in summer 2005.
We haven't had a lot of pre-release tracking offered up since Covid, so a friendly reminder that tracking isn't supposed to be a firm prediction. It's supposed to be inside baseball research based on polling and related analysis with information for studios in terms of how well their marketing efforts are working and where they push, pull and emphasize in the last lap. Second, as I've discussed many times, there was always a chance that The Batman would only make "most of the money" rather than "all the money." Even presuming it's excellent (I've liked every prior Matt Reeves movie, including The Pallbearer), it's still being sold as not that different from Chris Nolan's Batman Begins. Back in 2005, the acclaimed and terrific Christian Bale-starring origin story had to contend with winning fans back after Batman & Robin, while also existing as "just a new Batman movie" lacking in "butts in seats" stars and marquee baddies.
Likewise, The Batman is "again" a grounded, gritty, real-world crime thriller featuring known but not "box office draw" actors like Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Colin Farrell and Paul Dano playing "realistic" versions of villains (Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler) whom we've already seen at least once in a live-action Batman movie. To those not perpetually online or still frothing at the mouth for the notion of another "new" live-action Batman franchise, well, even Batman Begins earned less domestically than The Wedding Crashers and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in summer 2005 while barely earning more worldwide than Fantastic Four ($330 million). The irony of course is that in 2022 The Wedding Crashers would barely have a shot in hell of theatrical glory.
That's not the say The Batman will "bomb," it will almost certainly not, but nor should it be automatically treated as the next Spider-Man: No Way Home. First, Spider-Man has always been more popular than Batman. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy ($2.5 billion) just crushed the 1989-1997 Batman flicks ($1.252 billion), while I'd argue the boffo $1 billion-plus grosses of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises were lightning in a bottle moments. Nolan's trilogy came at a time when the very idea of a big comic book flick that looked and felt like a genre flick or a big city crime thriller was unique unto itself. Today, the notion of "It's a superhero movie, but also a xyz" is a marketing hook and par for the course. Moreover, No Way Home was the next MCU event, the third MCU Spider-Man movie, a proverbial Amazing Spider-Man 3 and a metaphorical Spider-Man 4 all rolled into one. It's playing like The Force Awakens because it tapped into that kind of multigenerational nostalgia. Fair or not, The Batman is "just" a new Batman movie.
Also just consider this your reminder that tickets are currently on sale for The Batman as of now if you didn't know!
